DEFINITION February 2020

FEATURE | SK I LLS SHORTAGE

WITH A PRODUCTION BOOM CURRENTLY UNDERWAY IN THE UK, WE ASKED SCREEN SKILLS – THE INDUSTRY-LED JOBS AND LEARNING ORGANISATION – IF THE TALENT POOL IS FILLING UP FAST ENOUGH roles such as accountants, location managers, line producers. Also in post and edit, particularly outside of London; it’s quite far- reaching as far as what the need is.” SKI S WORDS JULI AN M ITCHELL / PICTURES VARIOUS I n our last issue, we took the lid off the current production boom in Britain. On the swings and roundabouts of TV and film production, this is a good time; the SVOD movement is gaining a head of steam and whipping up all parallel industries, not least the crew and specialists we need to make this huge amount of programming. We wanted to find out if the pace of skills creation was in step with content creation, so we talked with head of High- end TV (HETV) at Screen Skills, Kaye Elliot, about what the organisation is doing to meet demand – and whether the industry has been caught on the back foot... “We are very busy and that’s brilliant – it’s fantastic that the industry is on such a growth trajectory. Obviously that brings challenges, and one of those is skills and having enough people. But it’s not just about having more people, as we need to fill skills gaps concerning the new technologies emerging; and there are soft skills, jobs in people management or HR, for instance. “We’re looking at a whole host of skills in terms of gaps and, obviously, shortages,” explains Elliot. “Since this trajectory has gone at such a huge pace there haven’t been many pauses, so there hasn’t been an opportunity for people to have a re-stocking, to say, ‘Let’s get ourselves galvanised for the next stage’. This growth has been constant. She continues: “Some grades or jobs have been in demand more than others,

GALVANISING SKILLS Screen Skills operates hand-in-hand with the industry and ostensibly fill the skills gaps through its relationships with industry sectors. It runs numerous schemes through its site, which include courses (such as assistant directing) and events that promote key careers – like post and edit. Elliot explains the thinking: “We’re encouraging new entrants, and also people who may not have imagined the skills they have could be transferred into a career in post and edit. Our ‘working with post and edit outside London’ event concentrates on what the job actually entails, for example, and how people could move over. “We’ve done this for other grades, and at times realised placement opportunities and some classroom training to prompt that. We are trying to be as multi-faceted

54 DEF I N I T ION | FEBRUARY 2020

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